Privacy Guides

I’ve been tooling around with this for a few days now and I think I stumbled into a couple pretty useful things.

1.) having multiple VPN destinations with proton (because proton wont just load balance you to country specific plus servers):

If you already have a working openvpn config you can go to the custom options and add this to it at the bottom:

remote x.x.x.x 1194; remote y.y.y.y 1194; remote-random;

where x.x.x.x and y.y.y.y are different proton VPN IPs or DNS names. I picked plus servers because for some reason proton doesnt have us-plus.protonvpn.com or any country based DNS entry that just does that for you.

I was manually changing VPN IPs when each one would go down for maintenance and that got old quick.

2.) Split DNS

Maybe you want to have your firewall do DNS lookups for VPN tunnel establishment and then have your clients route their DNS through the tunnel to 10.8.8.1 to stream BUT you need your pfsense box to be the DNS option because you have a host override entry for local resolution of a public DNS entry (nextcloud would be a prime example).

System > General Setup add your external DNS servers here (1.1.1.2 and 1.0.0.2 for me). Check box for Disable DNS forwarder and uncheck DNS server Override

Then go to Services > DNS Resolver

Enable DNS resolver

For outgoing Network interfaces you will want your VPN interface

probably uncheck Use SSL/TLS for outgoing DNS Queries but this will depend on your DNS server you are putting in there

In custom options (if you are using UDP:

server: forward-zone: name: “.” forward-addr: 10.8.8.1@53

Hopefully that made sense and is useful to at least one person out there and you don’t need to struggle like I did. Or maybe everyone here is a pfsense guru and i’m just repeating the obvious.

So, I work a corporate job and I have to use MFA to login to my accounts. The problem is, I can't use any other app other than Microsoft Authenticator to use, I've tried using Aegis or Google Authenticator or a couple of other ones, all I see is can't use this app or something similar.

Any workaround to this?

I don't mind using Microsoft Authenticator, but having someone tell me I can only use that kinda irks me to an unbelievable extent.

Thanks!

Been using this for months and never hear anyone talk about it. Faster updates than from F-Droid is nice.

Its free and can be used on android,also proton vpn is too slow for me,this one is much faster

Whether it be third party clients (like we used to have Infinity and Apollo and what not for reddit) or separate services, like ddg or firefox for web, kbin or lemmy instead of reddit.

right now looking for snapchat alternatives, preferably a different client if at all possible.

thanks guys :)

I have a lot of old phones that I never got rid of. Is there a definitive list of devices capable of being rooted? From what I understand, the bootloader is locked on all of them. How do I figure out how to root in the first place? The internet plagues me with scamware search results (useless "root tools"). Direct answers are welcome

Title. Still haven't figured that one out. On mobile

I say tell Meta to pound sand

Do you know a Privacy friendly blue light filter ? Preferably a desktop app but firefox extentions are OK

It doesn't take a genius to realize that a long-running account on any platform can easily be used to build a profile of someone.

Since many discussions on Lemmy and other platforms can often cause someone to write about their job, family, hobbies, where they live (city/community), etc., there's a lot of concern about non-private post history being used against someone.

Other than using fake names, throwaway emails, etc. are there any other best practices for handling this?

Should we be creating new accounts/profiles every once in a while?

In relation to privacy, I remember reading that Quad9 is a good DNS provider and that Cloudflare although in theory is the fastest DNS provider has basically alone the majority of the DNS market, which is obviously a bad idea.

I also remember that recently Quad9 was fighting in court a case where a government wanted to block certain IP pirate pages but blaming Quad9 for "facilitating" them.

I know that both Quad9 and Cloudflare are recommended on PrivacyGuides but I wanted to read some opinions on that.

I know that paid privacy services are best,But since I dont wanna spent any money on a right that should have already been free in the first place,What are your recommendation for free services?(vpn,mail,etc....)

drop em here!!!

I'm wondering if using the website or installing a PWA would be the same from a privacy point of view.
I'm using Firefox with uBlock origin, so I'm wondering what tracking information the site could get if I allow the PWA.

Also in MDN it says the app can integrate with other installed apps, so can the site know more information about my phone when installing the PWA?

Should I continue to just use websites to prevent as much tracking as possible?

Hi All, still trying to figure out which email to go for. Thank you for the previous helpful posts. I am wondering which email providers have built-in encryption at rest ? I know that tutanota e protonmail (body and attachments for the latter) do it. It seems that Posteo does it, but needs to be activarted if I am not mistaken. Any other providers have it? Can't find the answer re: Mailbox Thank you

During the years i've been subscribed to plenty of stuff, changing email (getting away from gmail) would seem impossible as i would have the fear to lose some old account i forgot but that i may need in the future. During 2021 i've been subscribed to plenty of crypto trading exchanges, KYCed on most of them, most even if deleting the account, do not delete your personal data.

I was doing trading, and doing it without a centralized exchange wasn't really an option as i was trading plenty of stuff and in low volumes.

I'm subscribed to Instagram but my account got locked because i was using Barinsta and advertising 3rd party apps, so now i can't even access it to delete it.

I won't mention what, but there are also other accounts tied up to my prepaid card name and purchases, and to my name in the email as well..

I feel like i've been fucking up and i feel a bit overwhelmed by the fact that i know i won't be able to remove important pieces of data from the web.

I wish there was something like coinjoin for accounts as well🤣.

Am i being too paranoid or overstating the risk? How'd you act in my place?

For example, let's say I want to use a Fitbit. I download the app, enter my real height and weight, but I give a masked email, fake name, fake birthday, etc. I always use the app with a VPN.

When doing an outdoor activity, I would allow my precise location on a run.

Is there really much of a privacy risk if they don't know who I am?

Please don't just suggest Gadgetbridge or a similar alternative.

I am just wondering what matrix instances are recommended. I would rather not use the main matrix.org instance, but I still want something with good up-time, updated software and that is privacy respecting.

Thanks!

~~Update: I am trying arcticfoxes, thank you for all of your suggestions! Feel free to leave more as it may help others who come across this post in the future.~~

Update 2: I had an issue with cross signing, but it works on envs.net so I am assuming it's an issue with the arcticfoxes instance. I am now using envs.net. As I said before, feel free to leave more suggestions for others who come across this post.

Just wanna take a moment to let people know about a very, very good and reputable tool for privacy and windows. I personally think it should be recommended on the main Privacy Guides site if you use windows. This is not a substitute for using Linux, however.

Linux is better, but if you have to use Windows, the Chris Titus Tech tool is quite easy to use, extremely powerful, and has been actively developed for a long time. You can set power-user privacy options easily, massively debloat your windows installation, install programs, and easily set your update settings to security only, if that is what you want.

https://christitus.com/windows-tool/

Just wondering about the communty's and mod's thoughts (like Jonah). I've used the tool for a long time and I am always impressed with it, especially as it comes from somebody who has a sterling reputation on computer and Linux know-how

I wanted give a try to kbin.social but not sure how private is the instance, the interface looks really nice but im worried about its privacy and how private is compared with Lemmy?

What are the pro/cons on the European Digital Identity?